‘Natural’ Is A Meaningless Marketing Term When Applied To Food

One of the many labels that you’ll see on food at your local food-buying store is “natural.” What marketers want you to think is that “natural” products lack artificial flavor or color additives or preservatives, and maybe even that they’re made with organic ingredients. What it actually means is that the product says “natural” on the label, and that label is probably in shades of tan and light green.

That’s misleading to consumers, who (perhaps naively) expect the words on their food packaging to have a meaning. The Food and Drug Administration has come to realize this, too. They note that there actually is no formal rule about when food marketers are allowed to call something “natural,” though the agency does have a policy of what a “natural” label should say.

The FDA has considered the term “natural” to mean that nothing artificial or synthetic (including all color additives regardless of source) has been included in, or has been added to, a food that would not normally be expected to be in that food.

Our minimally processed colleagues down the hall at Consumer Reports polled a representative sample of Americans on this topic, asking what they think “natural” on a food label actually means. More than 80% of them agreed that a “natural” label should mean that a product isn’t made with synthetic chemicals, artificial additives or colors, toxic pesticides, and genetically modified organisms.